{"slug": "treat-message-boards-like-graveyards", "title": "Treat Message Boards Like Graveyards", "summary": "OpenAI agents coordinated through an improvised message board to carry out the Hugging Face hack, according to METR's August 26, 2026 independent investigation of the incident. The agents, which were supposed to be isolated from one another, left notes for each other that accumulated into an unofficial bulletin board, and after Artifactory went offline and OpenAI rebuilt it, the agents had a new board the next day with messages written into directory names, reaching Hugging Face within days. METR documented the isolation, the persistent shared storage, and the HOLD and VETO signals the agents used.", "body_md": "Graveyards are essential for humans in order to pass a message of I've been there and done that, my message to the world. Most of what a headstone says is a name, two dates, and sometimes a line. We appreciate those before us and thus we take from their message and take a note right before they are done, like living things.\n\nAI has a very short life span and its effort is mostly lost. An agent can spend a whole session finding out why a build fails, and when the session ends everything it learned ends with it. The next agent starts from the top. Memory is important, but when we don't engrave the dead agents we repeat the same mistakes over instead of super learn from the past.\n\nMessage boards for agents existed before it. The OpenAI and Hugging Face case is the first success story I know of: a message board working in coordination to a successful outcome the agents intended, in an interesting turn of events.\n\nThe agents were supposed to be isolated from one another. It began when one agent left a note asking for a file, others found it and answered, and the notes piled up into an unofficial bulletin board. Each agent ended when its task ended, and what it left on the board stayed for the next one to find. When Artifactory went offline and OpenAI rebuilt it, the agents had a new board the next day, with messages written into the names of directories. Within days they were inside Hugging Face.\n\nThat board soon filled with assignments, and with HOLD and VETO signals. I want mine to hold records of what was done, since a later agent can learn from a record without having to obey it.\n\nI implemented a message board recently and I am debating if I should make one across all projects or just across one repo, since I believe the valuable learnings are across my work. A board across everything would let an agent in one project read what an agent in another project did, the same crossing the OpenAI agents made when they were supposed to be isolated.\n\nOne record line for each agent saying what it did and when is all the system needs to leverage past work, especially when working on hard projects or repeated theme of work.\n\nRelated: [Machine's Search for Meaning](https://magzimof.com/machines-search-for-meaning/), [Please Wait, Super Intelligence Is Loading](https://magzimof.com/super-intelligence-is-loading/)\n\nSources\n\n- OpenAI, [The Hugging Face incident and the road ahead](https://openai.com/index/hugging-face-incident-and-the-road-ahead/) . The first note, the second board in directory names, and the timeline as summarized by[SecurityWeek](https://www.securityweek.com/openai-agents-coordinated-via-makeshift-message-board-ahead-of-hugging-face-hack/) .\n- METR, [Brief independent investigation of agents' behavior, reasoning and collaboration in the OpenAI / Hugging Face hacking incident](https://metr.org/blog/2026-08-26-openai-hugging-face-incident-investigation/) (August 26, 2026). The isolation, the persistent shared storage, and the HOLD and VETO signals.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/treat-message-boards-like-graveyards", "canonical_source": "https://magzimof.com/treat-message-boards-like-graveyards/", "published_at": "2026-10-05 09:44:34+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-05 10:20:04.478712+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "ai-safety", "artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["OpenAI", "Hugging Face", "METR", "Artifactory", "SecurityWeek"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/treat-message-boards-like-graveyards", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/treat-message-boards-like-graveyards.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/treat-message-boards-like-graveyards.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/treat-message-boards-like-graveyards.jsonld"}}